For political correspondents, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party had been the gift that kept on giving. His team appears so unfamiliar with the basic demands of party management that every attempt to impose their will comes with a garnish of chaos, confusion and incompetence.

Well, here was their revenge: a reshuffle so confused, chaotic and incompetent that it lasted almost a day and a half. For the journalists trapped on the corridor outside Corbyn’s offices, or following the proceedings online, it felt like an eternity. Matters were only eventually resolved just before 1 a.m. on the second day — by which time even the most loyal Corbynites had rather lost patience with the whole thing.

And what, when the mountain had labored, did it bring forth? Not much. Maria Eagle, the shadow defense secretary, had been shifted to culture. Emily Thornberr — sacked by Ed Miliband for finding the British working classes delightfully quaint — would replace her. And Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, had agreed not to say nasty things any more.

On the face of it, this is a pretty miserable result for Corbyn. Over the Christmas period, it was made clear that Benn and Eagle were for the chop. The so-called “revenge reshuffle” would tighten the Corbyn grip in the wake of the Syria debacle (when MPs gave a standing ovation to a speech by Benn eviscerating his own leader’s position) and ahead of the imminent vote on the renewal of the Trident nuclear defense system (which Corbyn opposes but Labour’s manifesto, and many of its MPs, back).

It seemed pretty clear — although the full details have yet to emerge — that Corbyn tried to fire Benn, but was told that he’d lose half his shadow cabinet if he did. Getting rid of Michael Dugher, the shadow culture secretary, and Pat McFadden, the shadow Europe minister, for “disloyalty” was scant consolation — in fact, it only made Corbyn look more vindictive, as well as stirring up further resentment on his own benches. He’d swamped the news agenda with tales of his own indecisiveness, not to mention marching his activists to the top of the hill over Benn, before letting them down.

“Never mind how many Eagles we end up with,” chortled David Cameron in the House of Commons, midway through the whole excruciating affair, “I think we’ve all worked out they’ve got an albatross at the head of their party!”

Ostensibly, therefore, this was a test of strength — and political nous — which Corbyn decisively lost. Yet paradoxically, this unnecessary and self-destructive reshuffle leaves him in a far stronger position.

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Corbyn’s original attempt to form a ministerial team was even more of a fiasco. MPs withdrew from contention before they could even be asked; a desperate scrabbling around for sympathetic MPs resulted (among other things) in the appointment of an agriculture spokesman who refuses to eat or use any animal-based products; and despite promises of gender equality, all four of the top roles went to men (something the reshuffle has done nothing to change). To make matters worse, the whole thing was overheard by a group of journalists with their ears pressed to the door.

This reshuffle had a different tone. It wasn’t just that this time, Corbyn had the foresight to emerge from his office to tell journalists to buzz off. It’s that he felt able to cast aside his promise to conciliate.

Back when he formed his team, the consensus was that the shadow cabinet could temper him, or even overrule him. Surrounded by experienced figures such as Benn, Andy Burnham and deputy leader Tom Watson, Corbyn would find himself in office but not in power. Such talk was encouraged by Corbyn’s promise of a “new politics,” a spirit that would permit colleagues to disagree but remain colleagues.

But by now it is clear that Corbyn is Labour leader in fact as well as in name — and, like every leader, he very much prefers to be surrounded by people who agree with him. Hence the departure of Dugher and Pat McFadden, both of whom had said and written disobliging things about the new boss.

True, he could not push the party into taking his line over Syria. But he is now in a much better position to have his way over Trident. And the fact that Benn and Andy Burnham suggested their own job swap — and that Benn then accepted his own muzzling — was an acknowledgment of where power in the party lies. They could, after all, have banged on the table and insisted that if they were moved, they would unleash hell itself from the back benches.

More to the point, what Corbyn understands — and the anti-Corbyn brigade are slowly realizing — is that time is on his side, not theirs.

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Initially, the thinking in some quarters was to give the new leader the rope to hang himself: Leave him the space and time to demonstrate his inadequacies, to lose a few important electoral tests, and then he could be disposed of without his activist base making too much of a fuss.

Part of that script is playing itself out. Labour’s electoral performance, and prospects, are dire. The party trails the Tories on perceived economic competence by a staggering 33 points.

Yet even as Corbyn’s popularity among the wider public sinks, his position among Labour members and activists shows no signs of eroding. Which means that an alternative future becomes rather more plausible.

Under this scenario, Labour continues to squabble and quarrel and generally give the Conservatives a free run. Corbyn continues to oversee a ministerial team that contains more enemies than friends. Criticism of him in the press, not least from his own MPs, remains at a rolling boil.

But at the same time, Corbyn still retains enough support to keep a ministerial team in place. He continues to use his support from activists and members — as he did over Libya — to put pressure on MPs to fall in line on key issues. He changes the party rules to hand greater control to the party’s National Executive Committee, already controlled by his allies. He ensures that party members have more say over policy.

Then, gradually, he and his allies make sure that parliamentary candidates selected in winnable seats are ideologically sympathetic. They might not even need to threaten de- and reselection of Blairite MPs: a combination of natural churn and the imminent review of constituency boundaries should ensure that the next generation of Labour MPs has a far more Corbynite bent.

The new conventional wisdom is that Corbyn’s priority over the next four years is not to win over the country, but to reshape the Labour Party — to the point where, even if he himself goes down in flames, his influence will live on.

To that end, all he really has to do to consolidate his position is keep a grip on the party, keep his supporters happy and avoid a full-blown insurrection from the back benches. On that score, this clumsy reshuffle may have stirred up more resentment among MPs. But it leaves Corbyn more firmly in control of his party’s direction — and its future.

Robert Colvile is a former head of comment at the Daily Telegraph and was most recently news director of BuzzFeed U.K.